Is there anyone else but me who getting a sense of deja-vu on each new Batsu release? I am noticing some reuse of the same or similar buildings with a different look, the bus, the two factions bickering, the conferences, the DVD/drawers, the dark scenes and the chase finale? Some brand new stuff would be appreciated as I can see where it is going sometimes.

Maybe the school locations are why they gave such similarity in some of the No Laughing episodes.

That's what happens when you only keep rewatching the New Year's specials that have run over ten years of a show that has run for almost thirty years.

Things that get very popular also tend to get desperate about keeping their popularity which often means they stop experimenting and at most ride on new fads while keeping the basic concept intact. I'm glad Suberanai Hanashi got over that phase and returned to pure talk without huge amounts of gallery people and long-ass intro/outro ceremonies, but at this point the No-Laughing has become a whole new New Year's tradition. It's the only real rival to Kouhaku and actually one of the few New Year's shows where they don't announce the moment when year changes.

I'd love to see them go back to the format where they have a deciding challenge before the actual batsu game and then the winning team gets to be the evil masterminds behind it all. That would shake things up again.

Another aspect I'm really sick and tired of is the "Black Army" guys. Back in the days they had different punishers for each batsu game, but it has been the Black Army for many years now.

I mean it's still fun, but not as fun as the older ones because it's mostly the same thing over and over every year just with a different theme. That's why my favorite parts are the drawers, the tag sections and the part where they tell stories about the crew nowadays.

Not to mention that not everyone watches it every year consecutively, so people who haven't watched in years drop by to watch, they can still laugh or expect something. I think when it comes to yearly shows, we have to keep in mind about others who either watch it for the first time or haven't in a long time.